Impact of the Internet and New Media on the Malaysian Elections

Transcription

1 Impact of the Internet and New Media on the Malaysian Elections Tan Tarn How Arun Mahizhnan (With the research assistance of Fadli Fawzi) Institute of Policy Studies

2 CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY... 3 INTRODUCTION... 5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS... 6 SCOPE OF RESEARCH... 6 METHODOLOGY... 6 INTERVIEWEES... 7 BACKGROUND... 8 The 2008 Election... 8 Mainstream Media... 8 The Internet and Mobile Phone in Malaysia... 9 The Internet Regulatory Regime FINDINGS Penetration and Its Two Meanings Characteristics of the Internet Uses of the Internet/Mobile Phones/VCD Government, Mainstream Media and Alternative Media Opposition and Civil Society Mindset Effects Bad Internet Lost to Good Internet DISCUSSION Singapore Positions Malaysian Election Experience Inter-Relationship Between Mainstream Media and Alternative Media Implications for Singapore Engaging the Internet What If? ANNEX Malaysia s Multimedia Super Corridor Bill of Guarantees BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS... 41

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Malaysian general election in 2008 was a watershed event in the country s political history. The ruling Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition, while it won the election, lost a two-thirds majority it had maintained over four decades. The stunning losses for the incumbent and the gains for the Opposition have been characterised as a political tsunami. The question now frequently raised is whether the Internet caused the tsunami. The purpose of this report is to assess the role and impact of the Internet and other new information communication technologies during the Malaysian elections. This report is also intended as an additional input in the review of Singapore s own new media landscape, especially its regulatory regime. The study offers the following findings: Malaysia has a very different regulatory system for the Internet. The Bill of Guarantees ensures that the Internet is not censored. There are no special laws governing the Internet other than those that exist in the offline world. There are also no special laws laid out just for electoral purposes. This liberal legal environment has spawned a plethora of websites, blogs, podcasts, videocasts and s on the Internet, and allowed for virtually unfettered communication among the public. Though Malaysia does not enjoy a very wide penetration rate for the Internet, the secondary penetration through the re-transmission of Internet content through mobile phones, VCDs, printouts and word of mouth reached an exceptionally wide audience. The fact the mainstream media was almost entirely under the control of BN and did not provide a reasonably fair coverage to the Opposition, and the fact the government was seen to be inefficient, ineffective and corrupt, drove the public to the new media and made the latter more influential than it would otherwise have been. The biggest impact of the Internet and the mobile phone was not, however, as a mere communication channel but in their network effect. They made individuals aware that I m not alone in this, emboldening many to contemplate voting for the Opposition and empowering others to act in concert. Thus the Internet was not the main cause of the tsunami, but it certainly added to the tsunami effect through its network power. The second most interesting finding is that the usual fear that an unshackled Internet would produce widespread chaos and violence did not materialise. Experienced commentators believe that Malaysians are learning to use the new media with circumspection and restraint. Third, the ruling coalition s failure to understand the real power of the new media and engage it effectively and productively cost BN heavy damage in credibility and electoral success. However, the most potent causes of the electoral losses for the BN lay, as they often do, in the offline realities, such as poor governance, corruption, ethnic inequality and religious tensions. 3

4 In comparison, Singapore has a highly rated good government and a very restrictive regulatory regime for the Internet as a whole and especially for electoral purposes. However, when one examines the rationale behind this regulatory framework, it becomes apparent that there are a number of internal contradictions and inconsistencies. Even without reference to the Malaysian election experience these need to be resolved in order to make the system rational and sustainable. To the extent the Malaysian experience is relevant to Singapore, the way the Malaysian public conducted itself in the cyber world suggests that the probability of rational and judicious use of the new media is not beyond the ken of the Singapore public. Certainly, the notion that people who are sensible and responsible online would behave irrationally or irresponsible once they go online was not borne out at all in Malaysia the online world very much mirrored the offline one. There is no reason that the same would not apply in Singapore. However, if there were to be serious abuse, there are sufficient offline deterrents and mechanisms to retrieve the situation from the brink of disaster. In any case, when a state is faced with only a limited control over the new media, the smarter option is to, first, build and strengthen the social immune system rather than continue with an arcane and unenforceable and hence unsustainable control system, and second, engage the new medium. Jailing citizens for fear that they will abuse the new media is becoming, as Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew cautioned a quaint, a quixotic, esoteric appendage of the world. 4

5 INTRODUCTION Blogs don t worry me. Zainuddin Maidin We made the biggest mistake in thinking that it was not important. Abdullah Badawi The speaker of the first statement was not a Minister of Agriculture or a Minister for Transport. He was no less than the Minister for Information in Malaysia. A man who ought to have known. He was speaking before the start of the Malaysian general election in 2008, discrediting the Internet as something used mainly to book budget airline tickets and get entertainment news. 1 The speaker of the second statement was the Prime Minister of Malaysia, admitting a grave error of judgment at the end of a disastrous election in which his ruling party, though it won the election, lost a two-thirds majority for the first time since The outcome of the Malaysian election held on March 8, 2008 has been characterised as a political tsunami because of its extraordinarily unexpected level of opposition gain in the popular vote and parliamentary seats. The question now frequently raised is whether the Internet caused the tsunami. Some would say yes, that indeed it was the main cause and some would argue that the Internet was merely a channel through which the tsunami flowed. Others hold positions between these two diametrically opposite views. The purpose of this report is to assess the role and impact of the Internet and other new information communication technologies (ICTs) or new media during the Malaysian elections. This report is also intended as an additional input as Singapore reviews its own new media landscape, especially its regulatory regime, to offer useful comparisons with a neighbour whose political, economic and social history and current practices have a high relevance to Singapore. The report was commissioned by the Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS) on March 4, 2008, to be completed within a month. Due to limitations of time and resources, this report confines itself to the events and contents that gained prominence during the period between the announcement of the election on February 13 and the polling day on March 8. Also because of the limitations, the report relies heavily on interviews with key players and media coverage rather than on extensive first-hand surveys. 1 Blogs Don't Worry Me, Says Zainuddin Maidin, New Paper, February 17,

6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS In assessing the impact of Internet and other ICTs on Malaysian elections, this report attempts to address the following specific questions: What was the role and impact of the Internet, the mobile phone and the VCD on the outcome of the election? What was the interplay between ICT and non-ict factors that shaped the outcome of the election? Did a relatively unregulated ICT environment succumb to its viral, disinformational dangers, and what was the overall effect on the elections? What are the implications for Singapore? SCOPE OF RESEARCH Given the limitations of time and resources, the scope of research has been confined to the following specific areas: The period between the announcement of election on February 13 and polling day on March 8. Content created by political parties, candidates and citizens; and platforms such as blogs, news websites, online forums and YouTube. Content channelled through Internet, mobile phones and VCDs, and related print activities. METHODOLOGY Although extensive surveys of representative samples of the Malaysian electorate would have yielded more rigorous data and analysis, given the limited time, we feel the following provide a reasonable basis for our assessments: Review of materials on the Internet and in SMSes Interviews with academics, analysts, bloggers, news website editors, politicians and ordinary voters Review of media and academic literature 6

7 INTERVIEWEES Altogether, 30 people were interviewed for the study: Academics Azmi Shahrom Shamsul AB Baharuddin Aziz Mohammed Zin Nordin Wong Chin Huat Tricia Yeoh Gavin Khoo Kay Pheng Ooi Kee Beng Farish Noor Kannan Loganathan University of Malaysia Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Universiti Teknologi MARA Universiti Sains Malaysia Monash University Centre for Public Policy Studies Gerakan think tank SEDAR Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Nanyang Technological University HELP University Politicians/ Party insiders Lee Hwa Beng Tony Pua Jeff Ooi Aasil K Ahmad Nathaniel Tan Shahrir Abdul Samad P Ramasamy Malaysian Chinese Association Democratic Action Party Democratic Action Party Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People s Justice Party) Parti Keadilan Rakyat (People s Justice Party) United Malays National Organisation Democratic Action Party Bloggers Raja Petra Kamarudin Haris Ibrahim Ahirudin Attan Zan Azlee Leong Joo Ti Malaysia Today People s Parliament, also an activist Rocky Bru, also head of National Alliance of Bloggers Fat Bidin What A Lulu, also an activist Activists Tengku Nazaruddin Ambrose Poh PS Nathan Malik Imtiaz Sarwar Get An MP campaign Get An MP campaign Get An MP campaign Human rights lawyer Media professionals Steven Gan Chang Teck Peng Jacqueline Ann Surin Zainon Ahmad Malaysiakini news website Merdeka Review news website Malaysia Votes news website The Sun newspaper 7

8 BACKGROUND The 2008 Election The 12th Malaysian general election was held on March 8, Parliament was dissolved on February 13, and nominations were taken on February 24. State assemblies other than Sarawak s were also dissolved and their elections took place on the same day as the federal parliamentary election. The incumbent 13-party Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition included coalition leader United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) and heavyweights Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC). The main Opposition parties were the Democratic Action Party (DAP), the Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), and Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR). Among the election issues were the leadership of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, inflation, crime, governance, corruption, independence of the judiciary, free and fair elections, racial equality and multiracialism, and the mainstream media. The Opposition also campaigned on the platform of denying BN a two-thirds majority in the Federal Parliament. In all, there were 222 parliamentary seats and 505 state assembly seats. Opposition parties won 82 seats, or 37 per cent of parliamentary seats, while BN secured the remaining 140 seats or 63 per cent of the seats. It was the first time since the 1969 election that the coalition did not win a two-third majority, which meant it could not amend the Constitution at will. It was also its worst result since the first polls in The Opposition won five of the 13 state legislatures, compared to only one in the last election in The results were considered a shattering setback for Badawi and his government. Mainstream Media In 2007, Malaysia ranked 124 out of 169 countries in the Reporters Without Borders 2008 press freedom index, compared to 92 in 2006 and 113 the year before. All of the major mainstream newspapers, television and radio channels are owned by the component parties of the Barisan Nasional, by their proxies or by entities friendly to the coalition. For instance, the four Chinese-language dailies and the Englishlanguage The Star are owned by interests close to the Barisan Nasional s Malaysia Chinese Association. The Tamil-language dailies, including Malaysia Nanban and Makkal Osai, are also in the hands of companies controlled by the Malaysian Indian Congress or their leaders. The biggest press group, Media Prima, is owned by Malaysia Resources Corporation Berhad which has close ties with the ruling UMNO and the government. Its stable includes New Straits Times, Berita Harian (the second biggest Malay-language 8

9 paper), Malay Mail, Harian Metro and the Shin Min Daily News. It also owns four terrestrial TV channels. According to one report 2 : Media freedom in Malaysia has been a myth at least since Mahathir temporarily revoked the licenses of the English language The Star and the leading Chinese daily, Sin Chew Jit Poh, in From then, the industry has toed the government line and shied away from reporting controversial issues. Publishers are caught in a tight spot because of the annual license renewal by the Ministry of Home Affairs. The Printing Presses and Publications Act also has draconian regulations on sedition that can be broadly interpreted. Generally, licenses can be revoked without room for review, and have been. The government regularly gives instructions to the mainstream media about what to report or reprimands them when they step over the line. In June 2007, a directive was also given to private television and radio stations not to report speeches given by the Opposition. 3 During this election, interviewees said, papers were told not to give positive reports to the Opposition parties, or even report the issues brought up by speakers at election rallies. Some papers such as the English-language Sun and the Chinese-language newspapers were more daring than the rest. They skirted the line by reinterpreting the directives, especially towards the end of the election when they sensed the swing towards the Opposition. Opposition candidate Tony Pua of the Democratic Action Party noted for instance that the Guang Ming Daily featured him prominently on its front page and wrote about the crowds flocking to his rallies and his personal life, while ostensibly obeying the instruction not to tell readers about the issues that he had raised. For the many who did not have Internet access, the Chinese newspaper coverage, however limited, was one way of learning more about the candidates in their constituencies. The Internet and Mobile Phone in Malaysia The government has said that the Internet is hugely important for the country and its development. Like in many other countries, Internet usage has shot up over the last few years. According to the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, the agency in charge of the development of ICT, there are 12 million users of the Internet in a population of 24 million. Subscriber penetration is almost 20 out of every 100 persons, and has been growing rapidly. 4 Internet use is most prevalent among the young and the urban population. Among the older and rural sections of the population, however, traditional media continues to be their main source of information. Mobile phone penetration is over 80 per cent. It is understood 2 Jed Yoong, Malaysian Newspaper Forced to Shut Up, Asia Sentinel, February 22, 2008, retrieved from 3 Malaysiakini, Opposition Muzzled Here s Black and White Proof June 29, According to the Malaysia Communications and Multimedia Commission, 9

10 the VCD player penetration is high among households, though no statistics are available. The Internet Regulatory Regime Unlike Singapore, Malaysia has no special regulation for the Internet in general or for the period of elections. The regulatory regime in Malaysia is very different from Singapore in that it allows party political activities as well as individuals political activities through the Internet both before and during election time. Unlike in Singapore, there are no bans on podcasts, videocasts and films of political nature at any time. This allows for a wide variety of political expressions in form and content to be made through the Internet. The lack of specific regulation in Malaysia has allowed extensive use of the Internet (and mobile phones) by parties and individuals to engage in political campaign activities. The freedom of the Internet in Malaysia is enshrined in a Bill of Guarantees written in 1996 at the inception of MSC Malaysia (formerly known as the Multimedia Super Corridor), a project aimed at boosting the country s global information and communication technology (ICT) industry. One of the 10 articles in the Bill states that government promises to ensure no Internet censorship. Since the Mahathir government introduced this pledge, he and Badawi had kept to their promise. Though by Singapore standards there were numerous occasions to shut down many Internet-based sources including Malaysiakini, they were allowed to carry on in Malaysia. Like Singapore, general laws of the land apply to the cyberspace, such as those concerning crime or defamation. Since then, a number of these cases have occurred, including several suits for defamation, one in which a blogger was detained for five days of questioning for breaching the Official Secrets Act and another interrogated by the police for insulting the Yang di-pertuan Agong, degrading Islam and inciting hatred and violence between the races. Some of these cases have been dropped or are on-going. Reportedly, the only successful suit of online defamation so far was decided in March 2008 when the High Court in Kedah state ordered Raja Petra Kamarudin (who owns the blog Malaysia Today) to pay four million ringgit to the state-run Universiti Utara Malaysia and its vice chancellor for publishing an article in 2006 alleging plagiarism. The court also ordered a newspaper run by the Opposition, PKR, to pay RM3 million for reprinting the article on its website. In the past, the government has harassed the online daily, Malaysiakini, with verbal threats to its staff and searches of their homes. 5 Ironically, the man first responsible for such harassment Mahathir himself has been singing the praises of an independent Internet ever since he has been marginalised by the mainstream media. Last year, the government threatened to force all bloggers to be registered, but eventually dropped the idea. 5 Reporter Without Borders, Report on Internet Censorship in Malaysia, October 13, 2004, retrieved from 10

11 FINDINGS Penetration and Its Two Meanings The official Internet penetration rate refers to the proportion of the population that has online access. We refer to this as primary penetration. However, the ultimate reach of the Internet is much wider than what the primary penetration rate reveals. The multiplier effect, or what we call secondary penetration, refers to the phenomenon in which people who are not connected to the Internet get to learn about materials on the Internet through other media, such as friends, family, mobile phones, VCDs, printed and photocopies materials, ceramahs (Malay for election rallies), and even the mainstream media. For example, during the election, SMSes were circulated, which referred people to content on the Internet. One such, which made the rounds just before polling day, said: See video clip of young Khairy making love She Malay? (The website and clip were real, but person depicted in the poor quality video appeared not to be that of Khairy Jamaluddin. Khairy was an UMNO candidate and son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.) Videos were also downloaded from the Internet and distributed on VCDs. This helped to spread the message to the rural areas where ownership of VCD players was much more prevalent than access to computers and the Internet. Videos made by the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) on the demolition of Hindu temples as well as of its public rally were widely distributed not only online via YouTube and other video sharing websites, but also by VCD. People who had Internet access but might not go online often or use the Internet for political information might first learn of an issue via a watching a VCD. This was a strategy adopted by PKR and PAS. Once the person s interest is piqued, he or she may go online to look for similar material. Raja Petra (of the blog Malaysia Today) said that when he spoke at ceramahs, the way in which the crowd reacted to his words showed that they knew at least some of the things that originated from the Internet. When he asked whether such and such a thing was correct, the crowd would respond by shouting Correct, correct, correct. The phrase was used by lawyer V. K. Lingam in a YouTube video of him allegedly trying to arrange for certain judges to be promoted. For those who did not have access to the Internet, online articles were printed by friends, family members and also political parties such as PKR and PAS. Among those which were distributed were articles by Raja Petra and also by DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang (who has one of the most popular blogs in Malaysia). An interviewee said that photocopied articles of Lim s blog articles were even sold, though we were unable to confirm this. Bloggers like Raja Petra and Haris Ibrahim (of the blog People s Parliament) who had been marginalised by the mainstream media were also known to most of the audience in the ceramahs, a strong signal of secondary penetration. 11

12 Mobile phones and SMSes were also an important medium of communication. Parties and candidates used the SMS to send out general information about their election platform and candidates as well as more specific information about the locations of ceramahs. On polling day, they also asked voters to report suspected electoral fraud by calling the hotline of Bersih, an electoral reform civil society group. One party that relied heavily on SMS was PKR. It said it sent out over a million SMSes, adding: We also sent SMSes nationwide that were broadly consistent with our main campaign messages. Messages were sometimes modified depending on whether we sent to Chinese, Indian, Malay, urban or rural recipients. Messages could be focused on parliamentary constituencies, state assembly constituencies, or even sub-units (polling districts) that were in closest proximity to particular communities or in close proximity to campaign events. The close segmentation and targeting of audiences reveal the sophistication with which the Opposition used the mobile phone data it had obtained from various sources. On polling day, voters also received SMSes telling them about alleged phantom voters at certain polling stations and urging them to go and prevent any wrongdoing. After the results were finalised on polling night, Opposition parties also sent round an SMS urging people to remain calm and stay home rather than go out and celebrate for fear of creating clashes with the authorities or with other groups of people. The forwarding of SMSes received ensured that there was rapid and widespread dissemination of many of the messages throughout the population. On polling day, the mobile phone service providers reported an increase in traffic of between 14 to 31 per cent compared to the average, though it is not clear if the entire part of the increase could be attributed to the election. 6 The cameras on mobile phones were also widely used as devices to capture information that would later be uploaded to blogs and sites like YouTube. Besides videos of the police crackdown on Hindraf and Bersih demonstrations before the election, many videos were also taken and posted online of speeches at ceramahs. Some ceramah videos, such as those featuring Anwar Ibrahim or his daughter Nurul Izzah, enjoyed high viewership, often reaching over 50,000 views. The ceramah video of DAP candidate Tony Pua was seen over 104,000 times. Some commented on the video saying that they decided to vote for him after watching it. It is interesting to note that the ceramah videos of Jeff Ooi, who in contrast to Tony Pua, stood in a less urban constituency, did not enjoy that many views in comparison, often hitting only 20,000 or so. Hindraf also put up their VCDs on YouTube with the title Makkal Sakti GE 2008 (Makkal Sakti means People Power). A video of a Hindraf demonstration on November 24, 2007, received over 282,000 hits. 6 Surge in SMS Traffic on Election Day, The Star, April 30,

13 All in all, the Internet, SMSes, VCDs and printed materials formed a positive feedback loop, a virtuous circle with voters being funnelled from one medium to another and then back again. There was a network and chain-reaction effect, so information was disseminated very quickly, and often reached a person from many different sources (people often received the same message from different friends or family members if not from the originator itself) and via different channels (either through , SMS or word of mouth). It is useful to point out that even within the Internet, we can talk about penetration of an issue, that is, the extent to which it received attention from the rest of the online world. The networked, connected nature of the blogs and the news websites, with their links and cross-referencing, allowed an issue to snowball from one site to reach many others. For instance, Leong Joo Ti, an activist who volunteered to be Tony Pua s election agent, pointed to a Malaysiakini interview with BN incumbent Chew Mei Fun and DAP s Pua, published as both text and a video. Chew gave terse replies to questions posed by the Malaysiakini while Pua acquitted himself well with carefully thought-out answers. Leong said, It helped people realise that, as caring as Chew Mei Fun may be, she was, to put it very kindly, quite shallow in her thinking. I think that helped many fence sitters decide where to put their cross. The article made its rounds via , and was referred to by many blogs, including Pua s own blog and People s Parliament. Characteristics of the Internet The Malaysian political Internet is a chaotic multi-faceted creature, a reflection of both the medium as well as the multiple-pluralities of the offline world. In this sense, there are many Internets in Malaysia. The entities on the Internet can be classified by many criteria: Language The English-language Internet was the predominant space where the national conversation on issues took place. The most influential blogs and content were found in this language sphere. This is probably because English is still the lingua franca for political discussion between the different races. Though most non-malays have been obliged to study Malay in school, their proficiency in that language to discuss political issues is still more limited compared with English. A measure of the relative quantitative importance of the English and Chinese can be seen in the blog of Lim Kit Siang. The English-language version of his blog received over 2,000 comments for some posts, while his Chinese-language barely managed just a few dozen comments at most. The Malay-language cyberspace was the next most lively. Like the Englishlanguage Internet it also lacked homogeneity in content, though there was more pro-government Malay-language content than English-language content, which tended to be overwhelmingly anti-government. The independent Malay blogs did not seem to have someone with the organisational ability of social activist Haris Ibrahim (People s Parliament) or blogging activist Ahirudin Attan (Rocky Bru), or the popularity of Raja Petra 13

14 (Malaysia Today). More telling were the tags of solidarity. Little logos such as those for the Bloggers United and the People s Declaration movements were absent on the Malay blogs but found on many English-language blogs. (Bloggers United is an online effort to rally the bloggers against government harassment and censorship, and the People s Declaration is an articulation of what people want from the government.) Ideologically, Malay blogs were also not as united with a common rallying cause as were the English blogs. If there were issues, they tended to reflect the discontent with Khairy and Badawi. The Malay-based parties such as PAS and UMNO (and also to a certain extent the multiracial KDR) were also prominent players in the Malaylanguage Internet. Interestingly, the Wikipedia entries on Hindraf differed greatly for the English and Malay versions. The English entry was largely sympathetic to Hindraf, playing up the detentions of its leaders, whilst the Malay one was negative, playing up its alleged links to the Tamil Tigers. The Chinese-language Internet was also diverse, though not as rich in content. There were a small number of forums. The most prominent political website in Chinese was Merdeka Review, a professionally-run news website. Its readership was about a fifth of the multilingual Malaysiakini. There were hardly any Tamil blogs, but because of the widespread discontent among the Tamil community, further fuelled by the rift among the three Tamil language newspapers (with at least one clearly against Samy Vellu, president of the Malaysian Indian Congress, or MIC), the Tamil community had lost much faith in the MIC by the time of the election. It should be noted that many websites and blogs were multilingual. Malaysiakini uses all four of the common languages (English, Malay, Chinese and Tamil). Malaysia Today and many other blogs such as Kickdefella had both English and Malay blog posts. Blogger-politicians like Tony Pua and Jeff Ooi wrote not just in English, but also Chinese and Malay. Credibility and professionalism At one end of this spectrum where the professional news websites. Besides the websites for the mainstream papers such as New Straits Times, The Star, Utusan Melayu and Nanyang Siang Pau, there were alternative news websites such as Malaysiakini, Merdeka Review and Malaysia Votes. Malaysia Votes was specially set up for the election. Malaysiakini was the most established and well-known of these. Founded in 1999 during the Reformasi movement started by sacked Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, it has 10,000 subscribers that bring in RM1 million in revenue a year. It is profitable, and its editor Steven Gan told us that its subscribers included government ministries. The letters page and TV section of the site were free. Some 120,000 people visited the site a day. When it made access free in the week leading up to polling date, its numbers almost doubled to 200,000 visitors daily. On the night of the election, 500,000 people visited it every hour at its busiest and 3 million for the whole day, pulling down the site temporarily. The reason for the surge was that RTM, the public 14

15 broadcaster, was for some reason slow to report the election results, while Malaysiakini provided almost instant updates. Academic Farish Noor, who was in Kota Bharu at the PAS headquarters on that night, said that because of the delay in delivering the news on RTM, he had to log on to Malaysiakini to keep the party members abreast of developments. Merdeka Review was the Chinese-language, professionally-run news site that was started three years ago and was bankrolled by well-to-do Chinese education activist and lawyer Ngeow Yin Ngee. Access was free, and revenue came from advertisements, an online shop and web services provided to small businesses. It had six editorial staff who were former newspaper journalists and three non-editorial staff. It was not profitable. It carried eight to nine new articles a day typically. Its editor-in-chief Chang Teck Peng said that there were 19 new articles published on polling day. Its content was general news and not confined to Chinese community issues. It received about 10,000 unique visitors a day, rising to 19,000 during the campaign, and peaking at 260,000 on polling day. Malaysia Votes was, according to its website, a free news site that was created with minimum resources to cover the 2008 general election. Its creators are three experienced journalists who were planning to set up a news portal. When the election was announced they ended up being side-tracked into setting up this temporary resource that promised to deliver news on the elections that would not gain either the attention of or fair coverage from the traditional media in Malaysia. Jacqueline Surin, one of its three editors, said the site received 61,000 page views and 18,000 unique visitors in the first week beginning on February 20, The site strove to be non-partisan, that is, less anti-government than Malaysiakini and Merdeka Review. In the middle ground were the blogs that were run by individuals or groups of individuals. These included those that offered scoops and exposes, such as Malaysia Today, arguably the most popular political blog. It was run by the well-connected Raja Petra, a member of the Selangor royal family. His blog was informative but controversial and sometimes incendiary. Its reliability was often open to question, many interviewees said. Nevertheless it was widely followed because of its take-no-prisoners yet intelligent style of writing and the interesting content. Raja Petra was last year questioned by the police following a complaint by a minister that his blog contained writing that insulted the Yang di-pertuan Agong, degraded Islam and incited hatred and violence between the races. But no action was taken against him on that occasion. On another, he was fined for defaming a university vice-chancellor, as mentioned above. Other prominent blogs include those of Jeff Ooi and Ahirudin Attan, which also had their share of exposes and scoops over the last two years. The two were jointly the target of a defamation suit by News Straits Times, an incident that led to the formation of the National Alliance of Bloggers, which sought to protect bloggers from such actions. There were also numerous other bloggers of less broad appeal, but whose influence cannot be underestimated because they drew content from the superstar blogs and also drove traffic to them. The 15

16 most interesting content and blogs therefore benefitted from a network effect through links and cross-referencing between blogs. Among the political blogs are: Kickdefall, ( MageP s Lab ( Speak Squeak Roar ( Shanghai Stephen ( Can You See It ( and The Ancient Mariner ( An interesting difference between the blogs in Malaysia and Singapore is that only a very small proportion is anonymous, probably because the propensity to file defamation suits is less evident in Malaysia and probably also because there is generally a more tolerant as well as a less efficient political system there. Overall, there is also the guarantee that the Internet cannot be censored. Besides the blogs, there were other new media platforms such as online forums and chat-rooms. Because of their quick and dirty nature and the anonymity of participants, the discussions on them were often not very thoughtful. Some interviewees said emotional, racist and incendiary comments were the staple of some of these forums and chat-rooms. This almost subterranean world of chat-rooms might have drawn their topics from national political issues, but did not add to the national-level discourse in terms of influence. Technology platforms Besides blogs and news websites, platforms such as Facebook and MySpace were used by Opposition members such as Anwar Ibrahim, Nurul Izzah Anwar, Lim Kit Siang, Teresa Kok, Jeff Ooi and Nik Nazmi, and Barisan Nasional candidates such as Mukhriz Mahathir and Lee Hwa Beng. Anwar had over 3,000 friends on Facebook, while Mukhriz had slightly over half that. The oldest candidate, 89-year-old Maimun Yusuf, who stood unsuccessfully as an independent, had a Facebook site (with 300 friends) and her own bilingual blog. She is not technologically literate, and the website was set up by her supporters. YouTube, Flickr and other media-sharing sites were also extensively used by candidates. Wide or narrow focus Websites also varied in the breadth of their focus on issues. The narrowly focused ones include Hindraf (Hindu rights), Bersih (electoral reform) and Get An MP (discussing which MP is suitable for a constituency). There is even an anti-hindraf site called Hindraf Watch ( Others deal with a range of issues and include general blogs such as Rocky Bru, Disquiet (by human rights lawyer Imtiaz Malik), What A Lulu (by activist and DAP volunteer Leong Joo Ti) and Malaysia Today. 16

17 Party political, partisan or neutral Political parties used the Internet extensively, though the Opposition by necessity, in light of tight control of the mainstream media by BN, were the most avid deployers of the medium. Individual candidates also used the Internet, setting up blogs and social networks via Facebook and MySpace. Some of them also set up collective blogs, such as the quartet of DAP candidates in Petaling Jaya ( Most civil society and activist blogs were neutral in principle, but because of their choice of issues such as corruption, equality and electoral reform, ended up being anti-government in effect. Some blogs, mainly those by man-in-the-street voters were non-party political but obviously partisan, and were unafraid to in declaring their support of one party or another. Unlike in Singapore, Malaysians are allowed by law to promote or campaign for individual candidates or even parties. Uses of the Internet/Mobile Phones/VCD The Internet and other technologies like SMS and VCDs were used in a variety of ways during the election: Information The overt control of the mainstream media by the dominant coalition meant that a significant amount of fair and relevant information was not getting to the voters. Obviously, news of the Opposition was also not given adequate space or time. The Internet helped to fill the gaps. News websites such as Malaysiakini and Merdeka Review brought news to the electorate, the more significant of which is coverage of the Opposition parties, the candidates and the issues that they raised. These online news services levelled the playing field. Malaysiakini was aware of its role in this respect, and in a brilliant move made the subscription-based site free for a week leading up to polling date. On polling night itself, the website was faster in bringing the news to the people than the mainstream media, which appeared to have intentionally delayed the relaying of the results to the people. Both Malaysiakini and Merdeka Review saw a huge surge in page hits as a result. Blogs also let candidates send their messages out, and also acted as a conduit to a wider audience for articles from the online news media. Activists, through their blogs, kept voters informed about happenings on the ground as well, in terms of candidates and their activities, and the issues that were important. The Internet was also an important source of user information, in particular, broadcasting the venues of the ceramahs and the candidates that were slated to speak. In this area, SMSes were especially useful, and their easy forwarding function allowed people to be kept informed till the last minute about where they could go to hear the candidates make their case. Jacqueline Surin, an editor of news website Malaysia Votes, said the Internet gave people access to different perspectives on the same thing: Writing news no longer belongs to the establishment media. With the numerous websites, 17

18 people can now have multiple readings of a piece of news beyond the propaganda. What is more, they can put out their own reading, and more quickly than the mainstream media. Disinformation Political opponents, as to be expected, also exploited the Internet by disseminating disinformation. It is, of course, difficult to tell if some of the false information sent out was really misinformation o0cx (unintentionally misleading) or disinformation (intentionally misleading). Among the known examples of disinformation were the aforementioned SMS about the Khairy sex video, SMSes that gave wrong locations for ceramahs, an SMS that asked people to go late in the afternoon to vote because it was claimed that the polling centres were crowded in the morning (the intention here being a deliberate attempt to make some miss the 5 pm closing time for polling stations). It is not clear whether an SMS about phantom voters amassing at certain centres was real or false. In the case of the Khairy video, what seemed to have happened was that some people looked it up on the website and established that it was not likely to be Khairy, thereby quickly squelching the rumour. There was also the website Azalina Wild Wild Wild which alleged that Azalina Othman Said, now Tourism Minster, was a lesbian. The smear blog was started just before the election and was no longer updated after she was returned unopposed on nomination day. Opinion and discussion The Internet was widely used as a platform for publishing opinion and for exchange of opinion. Blogs have built-in mechanisms to facilitate discussion through their commenting facility. The most popular blogs sometimes attracted hundreds, even thousands of comments for each post. Many of the comments were long, several-hundred-word mini opinion pieces in themselves. Online forums and chat-room also facilitated discussion, although their anonymity and shoot-from-the-hip nature did not encourage quality debate. It should be noted, however, that named bloggers were not necessarily better as some of them too were guilty of the same practices. New sites such as those of Malaysiakini and the online website for mainstream newspaper Utusan Melayu also had forum facilities or letters pages that allowed readers to offer their views. Even the SMS was harnessed as a tool for debate, despite its limited length. One which was sent out by KDR used a quote from Raja Petra s blog in Malaysia Today: Raja Petra: UMNO is more Islamic & dangerous than PAS. Who breaks ur temples? Who put 5 in ISA? Who declare M sia Islamic country? Who snatch dead bodies? Who kill in police custody? Who create bumiputra? Who break family using syariah law?...who use khalwat to spy on people? Who implement Islamic policy in schools? It is BN. For 50 yrs they 18

19 brainwashed us to think that they are moderate. They are the extremists. It is interesting to note that the SMS referred to an article on the Internet, in this case the blog Malaysia Today. Another, sent to only Chinese voters went like this: Anwar s msg: I was beaten & jailed for 6yrs; time to move on, stop abuse of NEP & create a fair economic policy for all Malaysians. PM s msg: I m not sleeping. Bloggers also endorsed certain candidates or parties. For instance, Li Tsin of Speak Squeak Roar said she endorsed Opposition candidate Badrul Hisham Saharin, while The Ancient Mariner s Yusof Ahmad told readers why he would vote for the Opposition. Organisation The Internet was also used as a tool for organisation, allowing geographically dispersed groups to communicate and to do so without being online at the same time. Get An MP activists said that the Internet enabled them to be more efficient in their activities. Indeed, without the Internet they would not have met and come together towards a common cause. Mobilisation The Internet and mobile phones were critical tools for mobilising people, for example, to urge them to attend ceramahs or to vote on polling day. A typical KDR SMS, giving the time and place of a ceramah where Anwar Ibrahim would be speaking, read: Ceramah Perdana Anwar Ibrahim: 23/2/08 10:30mlm. Markas PAS Pmtg. Ara, Sg.Bakap (Dekat Psr Mlm). Hubungi: 012*******. Harapan Baru Untuk Malaysia Li Tsin, author of the blog Speak Squeak Roar, also urged voters to wear yellow, the colour of the Bersih movement. She wrote: Got this forward mail from a colleague. Apt, eh?: WEAR YELLOW TOMORROW PEOPLE!!! :) AND CATCH THE LAST FEW CERAMAH S TONIGHT! Let it ring true on Saturday wear your yellow and vote for change. SMSes were also used to ask people not to do certain things. As mentioned above, the SMS was used to discourage Opposition supporters from organising post-election victory parades for fear of that such celebrations would spark off unrest. The message sent out was Stay calm, stay cool, stay home. 19

20 Recruitment The Internet was used as a recruiting tool for volunteers. Tony Pua revealed that the DAP received more volunteers than it needed, a rare luxury, largely because of the effectiveness of the Internet as a medium to reach out to the public. Both he and Jeff Ooi first met their election agents through the Internet. Fundraising Unlike in Singapore, Malaysia allows candidates to canvass for funds on the Internet. The most successful candidate in terms of donations received via an online appeal was Jeff Ooi, who stood in Penang. His appeal garnered over RM130,000 from people all over the country and also from outside Malaysia who remitted money via Internet banking and by PayPal. Ooi won the contest in the end. It is interesting to note that the constituency he stood in was not a very urban area. Indeed, very few people recognised him as a blogger. Ooi said during the campaign it was the face-to-face meetings and door-to-door canvassing as well as the rallies that enabled him to bring his message to the voters, and not the Internet. The twist to this is that although his constituents were not wired, the donors to his campaign were, thereby allowing him to use the generosity of one group of urbanised, connected Malaysians to underwrite the expense needed to win over a group of rural, technologically unsophisticated citizens. Another candidate that successfully raised funds online was Tony Pua, who ran in the urbanised Petaling Jaya Utara. As with Ooi, the party only provided him the usual RM10,000 allocated for each candidate mostly for banners and posters a fraction of the RM100,000 to RM150,000 needed to run his campaign. Pua said: Relative to the Barisan Nasional, we are tiny in terms of the money the party has. But in this election, because of the Internet, we are able to raise many times more than in the past. He revealed that he raised nearly RM50,000 himself, a third of what he spent for the whole campaign, while the party raised a few hundred thousand ringgit. This avenue for raising funds is important for a penniless party. Donations to Pua ranged from RM50 to RM5,000, though the bulk were from RM100 to RM200. Candidates also asked for donations during the rallies. Urban and hence more affluent voters were able to give more, but less so those in the rural wards. Badrul Hisham Shaharin, a candidate from PKR who eventually lost to UMNO bigwig Khairy Jamaluddin in Rembau, said that for him the online donations were a life-line. As in the case of Ooi, many of the contributors were from outside his constituency, including Malaysians based overseas. Badrul said, I cannot solicit funds via ceramah as most of the Rembau constituents are not well-to-do. He managed to garner over RM 20,000 via the appeal on his blog ( Even the conservative PAS decided for the first time to raise money online. PAS treasurer Dr Mohd Hatta Ramli was quoted as saying, It is not as successful as we would have liked, but at least we are trying. Thus the Internet levelled the playing field to some extent for the Opposition, which had less 20

21 access to establishment funds and to big donors who presumably did not want to be seen to be anti-bn. Whether the field would tilt back in favour of the ruling coalition if they were also to solicit funds online is an unanswered question, though their candidates probably had more than enough for the RM100,000 to RM200,000 cap on election spending for state assembly and national assembly candidates, respectively. The online donation drive also allowed the Opposition to ride on grassroots support, evidenced by the many number of donations that were small in value. Whistle-blowing The whistle-blowing function of the Internet was a subset of its use for informational purposes. During the period of the election itself, there did not appear to be any cases of whistle-blowing and exposes of wrongdoing. A possible candidate of this was the SMSes on polling day warning of phantom voters and of busloads of army personnel who were being ferried to polling stations. One such SMS read: Latest news!!!...urgent and act now!!!...5k army votes to Bkt Bintang, 15K to Bt Kawan, 8K to Sg Siput, 7K to Pekan, 3K to Kulai Here is our 1st mission to hit one of the unfair general elections pls fwd to 20 friends. Tell the whole world tonite We are unable to verify the truth of these SMSes. It was largely in the last two years or so leading up to the election that the Internet came into its own as a tool for publishing and then widely disseminating news of government excess, wrong-doing, corruption, bad governance and other scandals. The VK Lingam video was first posted on the Internet by Anwar Ibrahim after he received it from a source. Raja Petra also exposed a number of scandals, including the alleged purchase by Abdullah Badawi of a jet for personal use and the compensation allegedly paid to a private company for cancelling the second Causeway bridge project. Other instances of poor governance exposed included one concerning debts allegedly exceeding US$1 billion (RM3.9 billion) incurred by the Port Klang Authority over a failed free trade zone, and another over the inflated compensation paid by the government to a company that built highways. Pictures and videos of excessive use of force by the police during the Bersih and Hindraf protests also gave the lie to mainstream media accounts favouring the authorities. Pictures of Abdullah Badawi napping at meetings branded him as a Prime Minister who was sleeping on the job. The series of revelations about corruption, cronyism, mendacity and general incompetence sowed a mood of discontent that the Opposition exploited during the three weeks of the election. These issues eventually made their way into the mainstream media, which needed to salvage some of its own credibility by publishing them. 21